Free Republic

Reports emerging from the region suggest that Iran’s leadership may be divided over a proposed deal with the United States, raising new doubts about whether an agreement can be finalized. According to the reports, Iranian negotiators had signaled that the deal was ready to move forward. However, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has reportedly refused to approve the proposal. The reported rejection comes after claims that senior Iranian officials, including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, had presented the agreement as essentially ready without securing final approval from Khamenei. If accurate, the development could point to a...

President Trump warned Thursday that the US will soon take over Kharg Island, which processes about 90% of Iran’s crude oil for export, following a second day of airstrikes against the Islamic Republic. “The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets,...

Video at link. "President Donald Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran “very hard” today."

Iranian opposition sources report U.S. strikes on multiple military targets in Iran.\ Iranian opposition sources report U.S. strikes on multiple Iranian military installations near the Strait of Hormuz. Reported targets include navy bases in Sirik and Jask, an air defense array in Bandar Abbas, and coastal missile batteries in Minab and Qeshm. Qeshm port was also reportedly struck. The strikes are said to have occurred a short time ago.

One potential coalition, which would be healthy for both the party and the country, would be between social conservatives and antiwar voters. In the time since the election, both of these groups have been repeatedly disappointed, especially by the [Trump] administration’s war with Iran and its approval, through the FDA, of a new form of mifepristone, a dangerous abortion pill... These two disappointed factions are naturally complementary coalition partners, particularly on the pro-life issue. There is a natural connection between the defense of innocent human life at home through pro-life policies and protecting it abroad by avoiding unjust wars. There’s...

Russia has a problem it cannot bomb its way out of. For months, Ukraine has been quietly dismantling the one road that keeps Russia's southern war machine alive — a highway so critical that without it, Crimea starves, and the front line goes cold. On May 27th, Kyiv stopped being quiet about it. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov formalized what had been a covert campaign into a declared strategic program, announcing a $113 million initiative he calls a "logistics lockdown." The target is the R-280 highway — also known as the M-14, renamed by Russian occupation authorities the "Novorossiya" route....

Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane said enough with the diplomatic charade — Iran is stalling for time and the best solution is to resume full-scale war. The chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and former Army vice chief of staff on Friday blasted eight weeks of fruitless talks as a waste while the mullahs play games. “We have to accept the reality that’s just not going to happen,” Keane said on Fox News. “They have one motive: Stretch out negotiations as much as possible, get as close to the political situation in terms of midterm elections, and...

The Biology of the Second Reich: Social Darwinism and the Origins of World War I reveals the ideological and scientific roots of the war that gave rise to Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. To German intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wars of annihilation were the natural outgrowth of Darwinian evolution’s survival of the fittest mantra, a “natural law, without which the organic world...could not continue to exist at all,” observed German zoologist Gustav Jaeger in 1870. Darwin clearly saw the implications of natural selection for human society. In his The Descent of Man,...

Today, I want to speak plainly for myself as a veteran and a soldier who has seen firsthand the high cost of war. As someone who serves under President Trump's leadership, I have experienced the promise of peace... The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror and something that has held us back for too long. For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building. It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervening...

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone offensives of the war overnight into June 6, sending more than 400 unmanned aircraft deep into Russian territory and striking targets that included a naval weapons depot near Saint Petersburg, an oil refinery in Siberia, a port in Russian-occupied Mariupol, and munitions warehouses in the Leningrad region. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses shot down 376 of the incoming drones, a figure that, if accurate, still left dozens reaching their intended targets across a geographic spread stretching from the Baltic coast to western Siberia. The attacks came on the final day of...

As tensions with Iran once again push the US toward the possibility of further involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, a novel brand of anti-interventionism has swept American politics. After two decades of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both the populist right and progressive left have grown more willing to question the assumptions underpinning American military engagement abroad. Politicians as ideologically diverse as Thomas Massie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now openly criticize interventionist foreign policy, while public fatigue with the post-9/11 wars has become increasingly visible across the political spectrum. Yet even as Americans tire of foreign interventions, cuts to the...

In the thick of another high-stakes election year, GOP voters are sending a clear message that cuts through the noise of legacy media chatter. It even transcends far more serious pocketbook worries.AdvertisementA new national survey reveals that Republicans are firmly commited to President Donald J. Trump, rooted in his record on issues that reach beyond dollars and cents. This data was gathered by the Democracy Institute in partnership with me, as host of the current events show News Sight and author of the finance newsletter Dr. Cotto’s Digest.The poll spotlights a GOP base that stands rock-solid even as broader national...

Record-low trust in institutions, deepening regional and cultural divides, political violence, and a populace increasingly viewing opponents as existential enemies is a warning of worse to come. Rudyard Lynch, the sharp-eyed analyst behind the YouTube channel WhatifAltHist, has issued sobering warnings about America’s trajectory. Drawing on historical patterns of civilizational stress, elite overproduction, cultural fragmentation, demographic pressures, and fading social trust, Lynch argues that the United States faces a high risk of internal conflict or civil war. His theory resonates because the data is hard to dismiss: record-low trust in institutions, deepening regional and cultural divides, sporadic political violence, and...

Top Democratic officials and lawmakers are breaking with Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as his past blunders and online history stack up. Platner’s ascendency to the top of the ticket in Vacationland broke with the Democratic establishment in Washington, D.C., and since Maine Gov. Janet Mills exited from the race, questions about whether he is the right choice to take on Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have exploded. Much of that is fueled by scandals that have cropped up seemingly week after week, be it a tattoo on his chest of a Nazi symbol or inflammatory posts online. Some in...

The US military carried out new strikes in Iran Wednesday, targeting a military site that threatened American troops and commercial shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. “Today, US Central Command Forces shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones that posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz,” a US official said in a statement. “US forces also struck an Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone,” the official added. Despite the skirmish, the fragile cease-fire that has been in place since April 8 is still considered to be holding.“These actions were...

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has likely eliminated another of the prime butchers behind the Oct. 7 atrocities. And IDF also continues to eliminate Hezbollah targets on its other front.Hezbollah kills Israelis on a weekly basis and continues to devastate Israeli towns, some of which lost or suffered damage to most of their buildings in missile strikes since Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas jihadis also continue to conduct terrorist activities both in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (what they deceptively call the “West Bank”). And of course, many Oct. 7 terrorists came home to Gaza to receive a hero’s welcome and huge...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said Monday that it carried out “self-defense” strikes in southern Iran, including on missile launch sites and boats placing mines. U.S. Central Command says the strikes were done “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces” but that it was “using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.” President Donald Trump said Monday that any agreement to end the Iran war should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to join the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements from Trump’s first term aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. Trump said...

Iran warned Monday that an agreement to end the war launched by the United States and Israel was not imminent, after President Donald Trump raised and then lowered expectations that a deal may be close.

After being involve with the production of Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Masters of the Air, plus starring in Saving Private Ryan, I'm looking forward to this documentary from Tom Hanks which begins today at 8pm eastern on the History Channel. All Day yesterday off and on I watched WW II in HD narrated by Gary Sinese on the History Channel. Additionally, this morning at 11am on AMC their Band of Brothers marathon begins, I remember when this premiered-on HBO right before 9/11 and thought it was fantastic, episodes 2,5, and 7 are my personal favorites. Episode 2 -...

Surging gas prices have hit American drivers hard — but some much harder than others. For households in the bottom quarter of the income distribution — those earning roughly $40,000 a year or less — commuting fuel costs now consume an average of about 4 percent of their income, according to a Washington Post analysis. For households in the top quarter, earning $100,000 or more, the same costs amount to less than 1 percent. The gap has widened since March, as the U.S. war on Iran escalated and oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz stalled, with implications for global...